The incident took place forty years ago. A fifteen year old girl happened to reach at the function held at the house of a relative. In fact she was not invited there. The feast was being conducted. A lot of food items were placed on the dining table. Some were waiting for their turn to eat. At that time there were no spacious auditoriums. The feasts were conducted mostly in the limited space of houses. The girl remained there for a long time without being noticed by anybody. Later on someone’s attention fell on her. “ Are you standing here looking at others eating? You may sit on the floor to have food.” He said. He put a plantain leaf on the floor and served food on it. When others were comfortably sitting on the chair around the dining table that girl alone was forced to sit on the floor. A drop of tear which was of humiliation rolled down from her eyes and fell on the leaf.
Since that girl had the face of my sister even now when I remember that incident my heart would bleed. Sometimes they might not have the intention of humiliating her. They might have thought that it would take some more time for her to get the chair and they chose that place either to avoid her soon or from the concern of giving her food without being late. Anyway she felt it as a humiliation.
We give importance to the humiliation being meted out to grown ups only. Children being avoided or discarded is not considered as a humiliation. They are little ones..they won’t take it as a humiliation or they don’t have the so called self respect- most of the people think so. When we turn down the peddlers who reach our doorsteps or beggars, in a sense quite intentionally or not we are humiliating them. Have you noticed the youngsters who come our home with a heavy bag for selling the products as part of their training program? They are ready to sell the products at the same price we can get them from the open market. Even then we are reluctant to buy anything from them. Some people behave very rudely to them. This also is a humiliation. The humiliation being felt by the children also ought to be taken as that of the grown ups.
First of all you assume yourself in the place of the person being humiliated. By discarding the deserving ones, honoring the undeserved one also is a humiliation. Just like the importance we give to the humiliation meted out to an individual avoiding the children and humiliating them also is a matter of concern.
